Audio: If you want to toss around bogus McCarthy references …

posted at 2:41 pm on August 27, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Or perhaps more to the point, when going into a battle of wits, make sure you’re armed. Former Hillary Clinton spokesperson and current MSNBC analyst Karen Finney didn’t prepare herself to be challenged when comparing Ted Cruz to Joe McCarthy on last night’s Hugh Hewitt show, revealing that she doesn’t know much about either. Hugh started grilling Finney about Communist infiltration in the 1930s and 1940s in response to her non-sequitur about McCarthy just to see if she had any understanding at all about the issue — and Finney hung up rather than continue flailing or concede her ignorance:

Hewitt welcomed Finney with a clip of her on MSNBC comparing Ted Cruz‘s “paranoia” and “fear-stoking” to Joe McCarthy. Hewitt immediately asked Finney about actual communist infiltration of the government. She dismissed the “hysteria” of the time, but Hewitt didn’t let her off easy there. He said, “It’s an easy question! Do you think Alger Hiss was a communist?”

Finney insisted it had nothing to do with her point, telling Hewitt she didn’t want to “go down a rabbit hole” with him. She said, “Hugh, I’m not doing this game with you!”

They got into some heated crosstalk, at which point Finney hangs up on Hewitt. As soon as Hewitt realized what she’s done, he immediately burst into laughter and mocked her for not being able to “handle a little tiny question.”

Glenn Thrush at Politico has a longer part of the transcript. Basically, Hugh exposed Finney as an intellectual poseur, an “analyst” who tosses around accusations about which she knows next to nothing. The Left has used “McCarthyism” as an epithet for so long that some just use it to sound smarter than they are. Hint to Finney: McCarthyism has nothing to do with opposition to domestic health-care policies or to budget fights.

John Fund notes that Finney should have paid some attention to her MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews on the futility of this particular argument:

Back in 1996, the Hiss case forced President Clinton to withdraw his candidate to become the country’s top spymaster at the CIA. Tony Lake, who then directed the National Security Council, told NBC News that the evidence against Alger Hiss was “inconclusive.” His office then refused to make any other comment on the issue.

After a firestorm of protest in which such liberal notables as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it was clear Hiss had been guilty, Lake’s nomination for CIA director was withdrawn. Even a liberal observer such as Chris Matthews (now with MSNBC) said it was astonishing that anyone would take the view that Hiss, who was convicted on two counts of perjury because the statute of limitation on espionage had expired, could be viewed as anything less than guilty. Matthews points out that John F. Kennedy, then a young congressman, was convinced of Hiss’s guilt. “This is not a case of liberal vs. conservative,” Matthews concluded. “It is a matter of clearing up Tony Lake’s sense of history.”

Apparently, we still have to clear up the historical perspective that some of today’s liberals have about the Cold War and the seeming inability some of them have to acknowledge that there were Communists in government back then — and that that fact is distinct from Joe McCarthy’s endlessly cited excesses.

Exactly. Perhaps they could also learn to be a little more careful with their demagoguery, too. Because tossing around charges of McCarthyism in the manner Finney did about Cruz looks a lot more like the kind of thing McCarthy did than anything Cruz has done since arriving in Washington.

Liberals can’t defend their ideology and their social issues. They are indefensible. They either have to talk over their opponent, call them names, or in this case, hang up in order to further display their stupidity.

But but it says right here on my Dem talking points that when talking about Cruz we are to use the following descriptions: McCarthyism, party of old white dudes, racist, homophobe, anti-immigrant, illegitimate Canadian, white-Hispanic. The WH didn’t give me any history so how was I to know? That Hewitt is a racist or something! /

..I cannot stand Hewitt when he’s smug and smarmy — or when he wants to engage in a slap-fest with Pat Caddell and like that. But will concede that he is on fire in situations like this. That is radio worth listening to: red meat served up in mass quantities.

Liberalism is retarded, but not all liberals are stupid. But all liberals are raised, molded, and educated in a way that insulates them from any real truth, and replaces thinking with memorizing stupid talking points and old lies, repeated over the years.

They know nothing of McCarthy or the infiltration of Roosevelt’s administration by Russian communists. Nothing. If any of them had the emotional stability required to read an Ann Coulter book with peeing themselves, it would leave them in a state of disorientation.

Thanks. The issue was about communist agents and not people who were communists at one time in their lives.

Again, he was right – he absolutely was – that there were communist agents in the government. No doubt about that at all.

But he recklessly – in my view – went after people who attended a communist party meeting when they were younger. These people were idiots but not agents and many of them abandoned their communist sympathies later in life.

Because tossing around charges of McCarthyism in the manner Finney did about Cruz looks a lot more like the kind of thing McCarthy did than anything Cruz has done since arriving in Washington.

Huh? You spend a whole post slapping a liberal for not knowing that McCarthy actually had a point and then you turn around and wag your finger, telling her not to behave like McCarthy because thats bad, bad, bad? How is that supposed to make sense, Ed?

These people were idiots but not agents and many of them abandoned their communist sympathies later in life.

SteveMG on August 27, 2013 at 3:33 PM

John Service was named and…

On June 6, 1945, Service was arrested by the F.B.I. for, “having transmitted, without authority, classified documents to the editors of Amerasia, a Communist magazine“. Service had in effect turned over to a known Communist, not only State Department documents, but also secret military information.

Mary Jane Keeney…

She was alleged to be passing information to the Soviet Union through Joseph Milton Bernstein. After the war Keeney worked at the United Nations. Deciphered Venona cables and her own diaries, corroborate the fact that Keeney and her husband, Philip Keeney, both worked for the GRU.

Ted Cruz is about as close to practicing McCarthyism as MSNBC is to practicing real journalism.

It’s a leftwing smear.

McCarthy was mostly wrong – not about the communist infiltration but about the specific names – but the left refuses to even recognize that Hiss, White et al. WERE communist agents.

White = Harry Dexter White.

SteveMG on August 27, 2013 at 3:27 PM

I’d say he was mostly right. It was in the nature of the business that not all information was certain. Those with something to hide were hiding, those with nothing to hide sometimes looked guilty because they were associated with others who were really guilty. If it had been treated as criminal, then prosecutors would have done what prosecutors do, and decided which ones had enough evidence to prosecute and which ones didn’t. The worst thing about McCarthy is that he was one of the very few willing to talk about the evidence. Most of the rest of the government was either uninterested, or trying to cover up the evidence.

So while it’s important to realize that McCarthy was wrong about some of the names, overall, he deserves a lot more credit than his name being used as a reference to a witch hunt.

Unless you believe that most witch hunts had actual witches in their sights…

But but it says right here on my Dem talking points that when talking about Cruz we are to use the following descriptions: McCarthyism, party of old white dudes, racist, homophobe, anti-immigrant, illegitimate Canadian, white-Hispanic.

Oh Goodness, you confused that list with Al Gore’s list of types of evil people that don’t believe in global warming. I think you hit them all except maybe for Nazis.

I agree with your point but we should not ignore the fact that from 1930-1950 the Soviet Union had infiltrated some of the top positions in the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. Many, many US and UK agents lost their lives because of it.

The McCarthy hearings didn’t just spring up from a vacuum. They were a response to a very real and serious threat.

These people were idiots but not agents and many of them abandoned their communist sympathies later in life.

Unfortunately, ‘useful idiots’ were as helpful towards the Soviet as many agents….and just as many didn’t abandon their sympathies – using whatever means they could to further the communist direction / agenda via their writings, their movies, their books, their teachings, and their influence on decision makers.

Among these were the apologists who state that communism didn’t fail when the Soviet Union imploded – it was imperfectly implemented in the case of the Soviet Union.

I agree with your point but we should not ignore the fact that from 1930-1950 the Soviet Union had infiltrated some of the top positions in the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. Many, many US and UK agents lost their lives because of it.

The McCarthy hearings didn’t just spring up from a vacuum. They were a response to a very real and serious threat.

Captain Kirock on August 27, 2013 at 3:51 PM

I often marvel at how his right-hand man Robert F. Kennedy seems to have escaped the slander heaped on McCarthy by the lefties.

The problem isn’t the lack of understanding of history, it is the absence of perspective, particularly as it pertains to the use of past tense terms like “were” and “back then” when describing Communists in government.

Huh? You spend a whole post slapping a liberal for not knowing that McCarthy actually had a point and then you turn around and wag your finger, telling her not to behave like McCarthy because thats bad, bad, bad? How is that supposed to make sense, Ed?

Valkyriepundit on August 27, 2013 at 3:44 PM

I think Ed was saying that Cruz isn’t even making accusations about anyone (true, false, or otherwise), but Finney IS making accusations.

So, if McCarthyism involves making accusations (again, true, false, or otherwise), then Finney is closer to practicing McCarthyism than Cruz.

Hugh was good last night. He put Finney in his club of hang-ups and also toyed with the VTech perfesser that posited the “I support the troops” comment as useless verbiage. The poor little leftard could not take a moral position on anything and could not defend anything he said.

Finney wasn’t trying to actually discuss the Hiss case, of course, or the details of McCarthy, whose claim of “200” names of communists at State was proven to have been a gross underestimation by KGB files released decades later. Instead, she was invoking McCarthy as a talisman in much the same way leftists chant “racism!” whenever they have no argument.

The mere association of Cruz with McCarthy by this spellcasting is supposed to wreak ongoing, withering damage on Cruz with no harm coming to the caster, Finney. But, as if often the case, the mere questioning of leftist shibboleths and chimeras has the effect of a pail of pure water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

I’ve come to believe that position is pure character assassination*. He was railroaded by the enemies of America because he was trying to stop them. More people decided they wanted to play nice with the commies and stabbed him in the back. He was right and we’ve inherited the mess he tried to stop.

*I’m not saying you are doing that, but those that first started pushing those ideas.

At the time, and I am old enough to remember the Kennedy election, and Esienhower on TV…at the time, both were OK…the drinking and the rage…if kept indoors. But, in public? The message becomes meaningless…the messenger is pilloried.

Marshal McLuhan had such politicians in mind when he penned this: “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.” But, his analysis of Mccarthy was on point, as well. McCarthy was not made for television. Period.

Whittaker Chambers was a CP member. Indeed a Soviet agent. James Burnham was a communist. In fact, an ally of Trotsky’s.

They were two of the leading anti-communists during that era. Brilliant writers warning the country about the threat from the Soviet Union.

Should they have been banned from government? Ostracized from society?

I don’t think so.

McCarthy overreached, he was too reckless with his charges even though he was correct about the larger issue. I.e., communists and communist agents had penetrated the US government at pretty high levels.

But, his analysis of Mccarthy was on point, as well. McCarthy was not made for television. Period.

This makes an interesting read, Cold War, Cool Medium, McCarthyism and American Culture.

Was McCarthy on target? Yes.

Was he a patriot? Hell, yes.

Did liberals in media destroy him? Unqualified yes.

coldwarrior on August 27, 2013 at 4:35 PM

That’s an excellent point about television. McCarthy helped in his own destruction by the way he lambasted some witnesses. This made people feel sorry for these witnesses, and he had to fight against the cult of American celebrity. So it wasn’t his accusations that were actually discredited, but he himself-thus what he maintained as a truth.

In the years since, the LSM has often run the clips where McCarthy was loudly interrogating the witnesses before his committee. He wasn’t like that all the time. But in our culture, a few times is enough to be branded a “meanie” and the truth gets buried by PC.

Wish he would have had more time to pursue the Communists in the U.S. military. In fact, I’d like to see that evidence even now, but I doubt we will. The Patriotic facade must be maintained at all costs, and the little man behind the curtain cannot be shown.

He was railroaded by the enemies of America because he was trying to stop them.

Flange on August 27, 2013 at 4:23 PM

At this point, does it even matter?

Look, I would argue that the Commies of the 1950 are to the right of the radicals that call themselves Democrats and Progressives these days. The goal is the same- destroying America- but Obama has all the tools denied the Commies when Ike was in the Presidency.

Karen Finney is your typical dumb-as-stump liberal analyst. She refers to McCarthy in a broad and sweeping way that has nothing to do with historical fact. It’s not her fault. She was taught to be a stupid moron and encouraged to see the past without critical thinking. She probably thinks that the Civil War was fought over the institution of slavery too. In short, they academically beat the common sense out of dingbats like Finney.

McCarthy helped in his own destruction by the way he lambasted some witnesses. This made people feel sorry for these witnesses, and he had to fight against the cult of American celebrity.

Dr. ZhivBlago on August 27, 2013 at 4:43 PM

That may have been the context of McCarthy’s time. Especially since such appearances had career implications for those called to testify and a few became box office poison by their political associations.

This is now where illegal aliens are invited before Congressional committees and whine that Americans are being mean to them by calling them by their proper legal status- illegal alien. I am sure any “entertainer” who got called before Congress today would be lionized as a hero of Hollywood. The Chelsea Manning of stardom by daring to be a proud radical leftists. The offers for future employment would come pouring in.

What we are witnessing is the attempted “borking” of Ted Cruz. Say what you will but this strategy worked with Sarah Palin. The Repubs won’t defend a conservative even of their own party. This is why its imperative that these attacks against Cruz must be met head on. Hewitt has done a good job. Tea Party groups and others like them need to keep on the offensive. The left is terrified of Ted and so are the RINOs. For that reason alone he needs to be our candidate in 2016. He is my senator and we love him here in Texas.

You obviously missed the context of my response. I was responding to the argument that a person who simply had attended a CP meeting was therefore disqualified from serving in government at a later time.

In response, I cited examples of people who not only attended CP meetings but were active communists.

You obviously missed the context of my response. I was responding to the argument that a person who simply had attended a CP meeting was therefore disqualified from serving in government at a later time.

SteveMG on August 27, 2013 at 5:30 PM

And I said they should be disqualified for positions with sensitive information. I also said that Whittaker Chambers is an anti-communist. That is why you used his name, and it is conflating one very different position with another. Being a communist/Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer is not all that common and employing them in sensitive positions is very unwise.

Finney wasn’t trying to actually discuss the Hiss case, of course, or the details of McCarthy, whose claim of “200″ names of communists at State was proven to have been a gross underestimation by KGB files released decades later. Instead, she was invoking McCarthy as a talisman in much the same way leftists chant “racism!” whenever they have no argument.

The mere association of Cruz with McCarthy by this spellcasting is supposed to wreak ongoing, withering damage on Cruz with no harm coming to the caster, Finney. But, as if often the case, the mere questioning of leftist shibboleths and chimeras has the effect of a pail of pure water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

Adjoran on August 27, 2013 at 4:18 PM

Absolutely THE best analysis of the thread’s topic.

Hat tip Adjoran. You nailed it dead center and made that nail hum as you drove it in with a greasy ball peen hammer.

That there was Soviet (as opposed to communist) infiltration into our Dept of State doesn’t excuse the kind of tactics he and Roy Cohn employed.

JohnGalt23 on August 27, 2013 at 5:04 PM

That’s easy for you to claim now that the cold war has been won.

Communist and Soviet loyalists were a problem within the federal government. Communism was a real threat throughout the world through the 1980s. In fact, many communist efforts have been incredibly effective – and have successfully damaged the United States in significant ways. We would likely be in much worse shape right now if tactics had been limited to those that didn’t offend your delicate sensibilities.

McCarthy was a drunken liar. That there was Soviet (as opposed to communist) infiltration into our Dept of State doesn’t excuse the kind of tactics he and Roy Cohn employed.

The pro-communist / anti-US / pro-Soviet infiltration into the US government went far deeper than just Hiss and a few others in the State Department. Virtually every major department in the Executive Branch had either active Soviet agents or communist / communist sympathizers working there that went beyond the ‘useful idiot’ nomenclature.

McCarthy / Cohn weren’t the only one’s in Congress working to expose the forces inside the government working against the government, and it was the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) that exposed Hiss, where Elizabeth Bentley testified in front of, naming Whittaker Chambers and others as communist agents. McCarthy, not having served in the House, wasn’t a part of the HUAC.

Post the collapse of the USSR, from the KGB archives and the declassification of the Venona decrypts, we now know that that level of infiltration was quite extensive…and that the HUAC and McCarthy were far closer to being right than not.

As others have mentioned, McCarthy had significant character flaws – flaws that were exploited to make the issue McCarthy – not the level of communist / pro-communist infiltration into the US government.

What we continue to see are two rhetorical tools at work to mask reality – Projection and Misdirection / Deflection.

Finney failed under fire from Hewitt because she is as he said, someone dim and locked around talking points with little knowledge of the facts. She is a student of revisionist history – not real history – and uses the same tactics that she claims to despise to attack her ideological opponents.